Ne croyez surtout pas que je hurle

In line with Danièle Huillet, Hans Hurch once declared cinephilia a sickness. In his latest found-footage exploration, Frank Beauvais comes as close to an adaptation of that statement as possible. While we listen to his vulnerable narration, akin to Georges Perec, which details how he dealt with an emotional period of separation and isolation, we see a beautiful flood of moving images from the films he watched in his rural home during that time. It is the diary of a man looking for help in the movies. Using snippets from hundreds of films, edited together in what must have been a frenzy by Thomas Marchand, the film finds refuge in a cinema that never ceases to be in dialogue with happenings in the world. The film is a fascinating approach to the way we perceive images nowadays. There is a sense of associative and deadening sameness, a desperation turned into cinema that follows an constant stream of possible exits and films, the information overload and lack of closeness we know from spending too many hours on the internet. Yet rarely have we felt that existential sadness as keenly as when, at the end of the film, singer Bonnie Prince Billy declares that what he sees is indeed a darkness. (Patrick Holzapfel)

In the presence of Frank Beauvais and Michel Klein (producer).